On Tuesday the 8th of October in the year of our Lord 2013 I supped my last glass of wine.

I have quit drinking this lovely stuff

I am yet to notice any significant health benefits. In fact my health took a downward turn last Friday when I complained of some sort of manflu. Mrs Sensible examined me and said it was probably a bad case of asthma. She promptly prescribed an antihistamine tablet, after a lot of protesting that they only send me to sleep, I dutiful took the offered pill and promptly fell asleep. I slept from Friday evening straight through to Saturday evening, only waking up long enough to take another pill and then immediately became comatose until some-time on Sunday.

I lost two days of my life to sleep

You guys know I don’t trust or like doctors or dentists, but under threats of severe repercussions, if I didn’t do as I was told, I was finally persuaded by Mrs Sensible to go and see the local medicine man, mainly because my coughing at bedtime was worse than my snoring and was keeping both of us awake.

My Doctor is not quite like this, but then again..

The doctor diagnosed that I was suffering from Brontosaurus or some other dreaded disease probably related to cervical. He prescribed an intense 5 day course of antibiotics, a little bottle of clear liquid to stop my coughing, pastels for my sore throat and not wanting to be left out, my good wife Mrs Sensible made me use an inhaler for people who are suffering from asthma. We agreed to disagree on the added benefits of using another antihistamine tablet.

I am sure my Italian doc said I had brontosaurus

Last night, which was three days into my treatment, I suddenly suffered a coughing fit. Tears were rolling down my face and the only sound I could produce was whuu whuu whuuuu. My lungs finally decided to go on strike and as I staggered into the kitchen while trying to bang my back in a vain attempt to re-start my lungs; I heard Mrs Sensible drop her mobile phone and come running into the kitchen to help me: she immediately joined in the banging on my back; as she slowly bludgeoned me to the floor I could hear her friend continuing to talk on the phone through the loud speaker, totally ignorant to the fact that she was talking to herself and that my wife was trying to save my life.

My lungs decided they couldn’t withstand any more of the punishing Mrs Sensible was meeting out to them and with a loud gasp of air they started to work again. I managed to squeak “basta basta” enough enough to Mrs Sensible and she stopped her onslaught.

Basta basta I can breathe honestly.

As I slowly got back up to my feet, I cast a quick glance to make sure Mrs Sensible hadn’t taken too much pleasure from beating me to the floor, fortunately all I could see in her eyes was love and concern.

I know Mrs Sensible loves me, really she does.

OOOH! I have news from Mr Cretino allegedly he has my new Italian driving licence, I wonder which name it will be in. When I get my breath back I will fill you in and when I finish my antibiotics I will raise a glass or two of wine to you all.

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90 thoughts on “I have quit the booze…”

good luck to both of you and lucky you have your own emergency medical commando standing by and ready to go. you might just be better off just drinking a nice glass of red, i hear that brontosauruses really cannot compete with that.

What are you doing up at 3.40 in the morning? I am only awake because either I slept too long over the weekend or the pills and potions won’t let me sleep. If I sneak a quick glass of wine I will be in deep deep trouble. I did try to tell Mrs Sensible that Englishmen drink a glass of whisky with a little bit of honey and lemon in it. But she has vetoed this wonderful cure 😦

hey 940 pm in my part of the world and besides my hometown baseball team is in the playoffs tonight, the detroit tigers, and they have to win or they are out and i have tickets to next week’s game. i agree about the whiskey, lemon, honey cure – called a hot toddie here. feel better )

Wait!!! The wine thing was all about getting our attention and pity, right? Cuz, really, I’ve found a glass of wine to be highly beneficial in curing all ills – or at least making them much more tolerable. 😉

I do hope that you are well on your way to wellness. “Sore bronchials” or bronchitis is not good especially if you are an asthmatic as well. Please take care and try to minimize as many pollutants and lung irritants that you can. This post was funny but not really since it sounds as if you were in dire straits there for awhile. (I am a former RN now retired after 35 years working at VA hopsital (veterans administration). 🙂 PS: alcohol and antibiotics do not mix very well.

I can laugh about it now, but I wasn’t too impressed when I couldn’t breathe, it is like drowning in fresh air. Mrs Sensible did a great job and I wonder if banging a person on the back really works. When my wife first ran into the kitchen, she thought I had swallowed something and was choking…

Gosh that sounds quite scary, I’m glad Mrs S managed to get your lungs working again. Must be tough having to stay off the wine, but at least it’s not forever.
I wonder what error your driving licence will have to brighten up your day. 🙂

Yes I think staying off the wine for the next three days is going to be tougher than trying to breath when my lungs decided to go on strike.

I dread, I mean I really dread to see the outcome of my new Italian driving licence, I am sure Mr Cretino will have filled out the form allowing me to only drive the 3 wheel Api vans and maybe as a bonus 50cc mopeds.

Oh dear. Poor PN 😦 Two days of sleeping….. Hmm. Mrs Sensible must have been bored wthout having your antics to keep up with….. Great news for your driving licence. I am still waiting for mine. I will try Mrs Sensible’s technique to make them cough up 🙂

Hot off the press:My licence is ready too!! Time to party – shake that medecine bottle and have a swig of cough mixture in my honour. They just forgot to tell me, so it’s been waiting for me since July. Gnnnnn.

You’re sick, young man. And don’t worry; you miss French opening hours if you blink, so I won’t be there till Monday morning. Now consering sleeping overnight outside the evil queen Cerfa’s palace in a tent.

I went to see Mr Cretino this afternoon. He said he needed to send my UK driving licence to their head office and hopefully my new licence will arrive on Monday. He very kindly took a photocopy of my photocard signed it, rubber stamped it three times and as he passed me my new temporary licence he said it is valid for 30 days. If he send my licence by Poste Italia, he will be renewing my temporary driving licence in 30 and 60 days. I am still in a state of shock..

Mr Cretino stamped it three times? Party time! I’m sure that he wob’t take a chance with Poste Italia; he will have entrusted to the man on the blind camel (otherwise known as UPS). You need a drink. I will lift two glasses of wine to your success, as you can’t drink yet. I’m too nice for words (and modest, too).

I don’t believe for one minute that the licence will be ok. When I get there I am sure the name or the licence categories will be wrong or it will be valid only in the province of Allessandria, or somewhere south like Naples on bank holidays and saint days…

I am willing to send Mrs Sensible over to you so that she can choke the living daylights out of Mr Cretino’s French counterparts. Following the incident in the kitchen where she battered me to the floor, I have every confidence in her half nelson, body slam and arm-lock. Let me know if you need her.

Do you know, that is exactly the phrase that went through my mind when I saw the E Mail saying my licence was ready. Good fun that DVLA took my e mail regarding the Italian farce seriously. They sent me a nice e mail to say they never received anything from Mr Cretino and they admitted to losing one or two of my e mails

According to QI, on the whole it’s OK to drink while on antibiotics. The reason why people think that you should not is that when antibiotics was first being used to cure syphilis, the patients would still be infectious for the first week, so were told not to drink because they were more likely to have sex while drunk. This has since passed down and has become a “tradition” in a way. (However, there are some antibiotics like Flagyl which will make you vomit if you take them with alcohol so don’t try it if you’re on this one!)

Great information, I am so impressed. Fortunately I don’t have syphilis although I do know a woman called Sybil does that count.

My instruction book for the antibiotics is in Italian and I can’t see any reference to alcohol. I can’t ask Mrs Sensible to translate it, because she will quickly realise my mission. So I think I can manage another couple of days 🙂 But thanks for the info, I am sure I can make great use of it at dinner parties.

Have you just given up on the wine, does beer count? … Seriously though, hope you’re feeling better and congratulations on finally getting your Italian license (here’s hoping they got your name right!).

I just realised that all my likes on your posts may seem like spam. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation – I read your blog on feed.ly and that never has the comment or like option! Shame. So I have to come on here a few times a month and unleash the hidden thumbs up. I stopped drinking sometime in August and I just went from one illness to the next. Hence proven that alcohol must kill all germs in your body and therefore is better than that anti-biotic you’ve been downing? Hope you feel well soon!

Thanks, I will put your theory to Mrs Sensible and l will try to convince her. I have never heard of feed.ly am I on it? 🙂
No quitting drinking is bad for you. (see small print re believing advice on this site)

And thanks for the likes, even spammers are welcome providing they don’t try to sell me viagra or surgical trusses. 🙂

Feed.ly is Google Reader substitute. I was in your old homeland and didn’t get the memo that they had shut down. Boo! This was all an elaborate ruse to sell you some sort of chinese tea that’ll help you lose 5000 pounds in 2 days.

Quiitting booze !! Huh!! That didn’t last long PN !!! From the headline to the last sentence of this post !! 😉
I hope you are feeling better and please don’t catch T Rex ….. now that is painful 😀
Ralph 😀

The lungs probably stopped working because I had quit the wine, like a shock attack. It is my birthday next month and it is a unique birthday so the celebrations will start as soon as the antibiotics are out of my system. 🙂

I have suffered a frog in my throat at times, rare times; but never a brontosaurus… sounds rather gargantuan. In reply to Mrs Sensible’s vetoes, you could always point out that she may get the chance to beat you severely on the back again, I’m sure that could turn the tide. I can’t see how the wine is related to your lungs, unless you were, of course, drowning in the stuff? I can only imagine the ramifications… what a way to go; a bit like the Irishman in the whisky vat, but that creates a fire hazard at the time of cremation… I am led to believe it took three days to extinguish the flames.

I say all this with tongue in cheek after my own recent brush with Dizzy Lizzy spells, once my ears had been cleared and the medication finished during which I drank only 0.0% beer, the doctor said ‘go for it’, when I enquired about returning to regular beer.

Do hope you get better soon so you can (safely) enjoy a glass of wine. Mrs. Sensible is right, though: no alcohol while you’re on antibiotics. The two don’t mix like gin and vermouth, more like oil and water.

Wait…I’m confused…why did you stop drinking wine in the first place??? I understand now that you are on antibiotics, but why before? There are health benefits to wine, you know!!! Why do you think the Meditteranean diet is so beneficial? :))))

Thanks Andy, Mrs Sensible is currently sat here reading the instruction that came with the antibiotics (I have been taking them for 3 days) It seems I have to stay out of the sun of my skin will go blotchy… So I am off to buy a burka 🙂

Ha-ha! With all the bad weather Italy’s been having recently, no-one will notice another person wandering round dressed like a mummy. Still, at least you won’t get cervicale from draughts. Never knew board games could be so dangerous.

hope you are better PN, sounds dreadful not being able to have air in your lungs… lucky to always have Mrs Sensible by your side. Hope you recognise this… I am sure this post is all an excuse to go back to drinking grappa and wine…. ahahahahhaha you think we don’t know that??? 😉

At lunch time I was driving back from Iper Coop, well Mrs Sensible was driving I was just the co driver. As we joined the duel carriageway I had another coughing fit, as my lips slowly turned blue and I made my now famous whuu whuu whuuuu sound; she did an emergency stop and started to beat my back… If the police had driven by they would have dragged her off for domestic violence. I need to get well soon before she beats me to death.

Thanks but I am still dying. I think I will go back and visit the witch doctor next week. I will take Mrs Sensible with me, who knows with my bad Italian he might have treated me for some other illness

yeeks! There’s no reason one shouldn’t drink a glass of wine just because they’re taking antibiotics…how very un-Italian! When I first came here it was the cure all for everything…then they came up with propoli (yeech that is wicked stuff) and the world went crazy! 😉

I teach English to a group of Italians every Thursday night. A fortnight ago I decided it would be a good idea to take them to a cantina for wine tasting as part of our English lesson, this week we are of to the same cantina for a Murder Mystery. The mystery was for 8 people and I have had to adapt it for 9 people so I will need a bottle or two of wine to get through the evening.

The trouble is I am supposed to be sensible and it is really difficult. Once the wine started flowing at the cantina, I had to threaten them with detention and extra work if they continued to talk amongst themselves in Italian